CG&CC-gaming

Martin Ender

00:16

I think my favourite levels so far are the square grids with different sized squares (just finished Gridlock 2, which was good fun)

Eric Tressler

I've considered making a sequence of 5-10 of those as extra levels, in the future. Also the combination lock levels.

Martin Ender

11:56

Yeah, the ones I've seen of those so far were really fun as well.

Nathan Merrill

17:40

@EricTressler when you were manually testing the generated algorithms, what were you testing for?

aka, is it possible for you to include an infinite number of levels after the campaign is finished?

Nathan Merrill

18:51

@EricTressler starting the game now. I think it could really use some background music (yeah, I know that often requires other people/payment)

Eric Tressler

@NathanMerrill It is technically possible to include a random level generator; the game began as just the random level generator. Nontrivial levels take from 30m to several hours, though, so I could only generate boring levels on the fly.

Nathan Merrill

ah, makes sense.

Eric Tressler

After playing Hexcells Infinite's random levels a couple of times, I think it might have the same problem. I'd rather just leave them out

As for the background music... yeah, I know. I've been playing with ambient stuff over here for a while, but I just haven't come up with anything I like enough.

Nathan Merrill

Also, regarding progression: to make it more campaign like, I'd could see you building 3-4 levels using only base features, and then add a single feature, and use that feature for a couple of levels

that way, the first 10 levels don't feel like a tutorial, but rather, you're unlocking a new feature

Eric Tressler

@NathanMerrill There's also a story there. Originally, I had something like that, but I let people play through the levels in any order. So people would jump ahead levels, and I got tons of complaints about the game being confusing ("what's the yellow X in the upper right?)

Nathan Merrill

19:04

yeah. So far, all of the controls/icons have been intuitive except for the yellow X

I wouldn't even bother explaining you can click the numbers to cross out a line

just let a user stumble upon that :P

Eric Tressler

So I decided that until the rules are all laid out, the game should be linear. Given that decision, I wanted to minimize the linear part of the game. The result is levels like 4, 9, 10 thrown in there for some variety.

Nathan Merrill

I agree, that the game should be linear. It'd be cool if there was some progress tracker

Eric Tressler

What kind of progress tracker?

Nathan Merrill

like, I'm currently on level 10.

you could put them in (somewhat arbitrary) sets

and so, I can see "Oh, I'm on the last level of the current set"

Eric Tressler

Ah. There is, you'll see it.

Nathan Merrill

19:08

ah ok. All I see right now is the "10: Four Amigos"

Eric Tressler

Yeah, I don't want to further spoil anything.

Nathan Merrill

that's fine :)

bah, killed my perfect record

Eric Tressler

It's up to you how to deal with that. It's pretty easy to tell where you've done that, so you can come back to it later if you'd rather not play the same level over and over. Or you can just forget about it forever and move on.

Nathan Merrill

wait, you track my record?

I was just tracking it personally

it was faulty logic, so I opted to reset the level

Eric Tressler

Yes, I track it. The first indicator (that's subtle) is the puzzle's title in the lower left.

It's light blue if you haven't made a mistake. When you hit a mine, it turns white.

Nathan Merrill

20:00

@EricTressler perhaps the game generates levels in the background while the user is playing?

Martin Ender

@NathanMerrill while that would be kinda nice as a way to make the random generator possible at all, it would probably be a frustrating experience if the player ever outpaces the generator.

Eric Tressler

@NathanMerrill I considered that too, but I don't know how to pull it off. It would be a major redesign of a lot of things

I can't prove that the level generator (solver) can't be dramatically faster, though

It manipulates a giant system of inequalities, over and over. One thing I wanted to do, but haven't tried, is to convert everything to SAT and apply DPLL.

My best idea so far (I think) is to just make a pool of levels using existing designs or trivial variants.

Nathan Merrill

The two big problems I see are:
1. CPU load that the user doesn't expect (or possibly even need), and
2. There's no good way to deal with generation parameters, as you really don't want to prompt the user for them, as that defeats the purpose of the invisible background generation

@MartinEnder this will actually get the player hooked: "We're out of levels right now: come back tomorrow for your next set!"

Martin Ender

that depends a lot on the player :P

Nathan Merrill

not that that's actually feasible as the player will likely close the program, so you'd have to keep a background process, and messiness like that

Eric Tressler

20:13

Yeah... I think I will eventually add some levels coming off the main level select screen, but clearly marked as not required to finish the game. The level select screen can easily be 20x20 before it starts to become annoying to use.

Martin Ender

ah, finally got to the second rectangle grid (unless I forgot about one)

this is looking fun

Eric Tressler

@MartinEnder B?

Martin Ender

Teardrop (69)

Eric Tressler

Ah, okay. That one is equivalent to the T488 tiling (octagons and squares). That's not what I thought you were talking about initially.

Martin Ender

oh yeah, now I can see that. in this case I actually find the rectangle version much easier to work with

(whereas hexagons are easier to work with than the staircase rectangle tiling)

Nathan Merrill

20:21

I'm on 13.

I'm surprised at how difficult it is already

Eric Tressler

@NathanMerrill It can be. If you haven't visited the level select screen recently, you can go back to check it out now; you won't lose progress on 13.

Nathan Merrill

I have seen it.

Martin Ender

yay, combination lock 3 :D

Nathan Merrill

@EricTressler is there an undo before I make a mistake?

Eric Tressler

@NathanMerrill No; I mean, it's not a true "undo". I assume you made a lucky guess/mistake?

Nathan Merrill

20:29

well, I'm not sure. I made the move a couple of minutes ago, but I'm not sure if it was actually sound logic

so I was hoping to replay it

most of it was marking flags

Martin Ender

you can unmark flags

Nathan Merrill

but its certainly possible that I got lucky with a square click

Martin Ender

ah okay

Nathan Merrill

see that line of 4 vertical white squares?

I'm not sure if I was actually ok to mark those

Eric Tressler

If you already had the 1,2 in the upper right exposed, then it was

Nathan Merrill

20:32

ah, yeah

I remember that now

oh, I remember why I clicked on those. because of the blue counter :)

oh! I wanted to ask you a while ago:

often times in puzzles I use the fact that I know that they are solvable to solve the puzzle

like, "if this square had a flag, then these other two squares would be completely ambiguous"

so, I know that it doesn't have a flag

its sound logic, but it feels...cheaty

Martin Ender

I've seen a few cases where that reasoning was possible, but so far I've always found a way to avoid actually using it to solve the puzzle

Eric Tressler

Oh, man. I've had this discussion with a couple of other people too. So, what I can say for sure is:

Nathan Merrill

@MartinEnder of course, because the generator didn't use that logic to generate the puzzle

Eric Tressler

You definitely never need to reason that way, because the solver doesn't use that kind of logic

And I'm not entirely convinced it's sound, because you'd have to prove that nothing else you can uncover would disambiguate those two tiles in question

Though I will admit it seems plausible on its face, I'm skeptical

Nathan Merrill

@EricTressler if they are two squares in the corner of the same color with all adjacent tiles a ? or a flag

like, its totally possible. you just never see it because the solver makes sure it never happens

Eric Tressler

20:40

It's possible for a situation to be ambiguous (not in this game, but in general), but I'm not sure it's possible for there to be a situation where solvability of the puzzle lets you do anything sensible to resolve an ambiguity.

For example: "This tile has to be a mine, or else the puzzle would be ambiguous and unsolvable" --> I counter with "Then it's already ambiguous and unsolvable, and why apply that logic to THAT tile and not one of the others?"

I'm very murky on that topic, though; I could be wrong.

Nathan Merrill

ok...I think I have a small example

001
?--  1
--?  1

dashes are uncovered squares

Martin Ender

lvl 70 done. the next one looks very tempting, but I think I'll try to make some progress on Retina instead now :P

Nathan Merrill

so, I'd apply the logic that the square at 1,1 can't have a flag, because then you couldn't tell which of 2,0 or 2,1 is mined

but I could see how the logic could apply the other way

aka, the square at 2,1 would have to be open, because otherwise you couldn't tell which of 1,1 or 1,2 is mined

Eric Tressler

I don't follow; are the 0,0,1 tiles with # neighbors revealed, or column hints? Either way, you can reveal a few of the "-"s

Nathan Merrill

# of neighbors

oh, I messed it up

it needs to be 011

oh, even that doesn't work

it'd have to be ?11

?11
?--  1
--?  1

Eric Tressler

20:51

Okay, that is definitely ambiguous. So you have something you can do there using solvability?

Nathan Merrill

I'm saying your argument holds

lets say that the square at 1,1 was a flag

then the bottom row would be totally ambiguous

but the same logic applies in reverse

if the square at 2,1 was a flag

then the middle row is ambiguous

Eric Tressler

I can't come up with a proof, though; I would have to formalize it. But yeah, I assume now you see why I said "oh, man" when you brought it up.

Nathan Merrill

its a practical though. For example, if somebody gave you a crossword puzzle, you wouldn't start adding up the digits of the letters assuming it has cryptographic clues

because you assume its solvable via the normal crossword ways

Eric Tressler

That's true; that's probably why it comes up so often.

Nathan Merrill

@EricTressler on normal minesweeper, if I've uncovered all of the correct squares, the game finishes (even if I haven't flagged all of the squares)

is there a reason you don't do that?

Eric Tressler

21:04

spite!

Nathan Merrill

lol?

Eric Tressler

no, I'm kidding. there's no particular reason.

Nathan Merrill

wait, really? Literally everything else I've brought up you said that you had previously considered that

(not that that was a bad thing)

Eric Tressler

So for this... I'm not sure. On the one hand, it could spare you some minor annoyance at the end of a level, though probably not typically more than 5 or so tiles that have to be flagged. The downside might be that a level could end unexpectedly.

Nathan Merrill

yeah, its not huge either way

Eric Tressler

21:12

If you think that it would be a positive change, I can make a note of it. I usually wait for 2 or 3 people to mention something like that to me before I act on it

Nathan Merrill

its either a minor annoyance for those who expect it, or a minor surprise for those that don't

Eric Tressler

yeah. I agree. I'll make a note of it, anyway.

Nathan Merrill

oooh...I'm on the asterisk

cool shape

Eric Tressler

Thanks! I stole it from my keyboard. I'll be back in a while, I need to get coffee

DJMcMayhem

21:32

mmmhhhmmm, coffee

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

21:54

@DJMcMayhem mehhh coffee

Martin Ender

23:45

I was just stuck on B Rectangle forever, thinking I needed some super complicated deduction to make any more progress... turns out I just can't count to 5...

Eric Tressler

@MartinEnder That's the one that I thought you were on earlier. It's a tiny joke, because of "A Rectangle".

Martin Ender

I was about to ask about the name but then I realised the wordplay :D

Eric Tressler

That one is quite hard, though, I think

Martin Ender

tripod is really neat so far :)

Eric Tressler

Most of my favorite levels are toward the end of the game, and you're about to get into them. The next level is one, and so was Windmill

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